Taz, blue chihuahua

Little Dog is Lost and Found for the Holidays
By John Mongtomery, the Fostoria Focus
Jan 11, 2007 10:42 AM EST

Christmas came a little late for a Florida woman visiting Fostoria last week, but she doesn't mind the wait after she and her husband were reunited with their dog, which was lost Christmas Eve.

Floridians Debra and Gene McClough (left) were reunited with their blue Chihuahua Taz after the dog was found this past Thursday by Fostorians Ken and Judy Roush during a walk.

"I couldn't have Christmas or New Year's with the kids, so we're going to have a little more time here," Debra McClough said. "I couldn't even get into Christmas morning with the kids opening presents because I was so worried about him.

"I just needed to know if he was alive or not before I could go home," she said. "The grandkids, they understood."

McClough and her husband, Gene, travelled to Fostoria to visit their son, Richard McClough, their daughter, Barbara Snow, and their two families for the holidays when the McCloughs' two dogs accidentally got out of house. The couple quickly found the older dog, but Taz, a 6-year-old blue Chihuahua, evaded capture. He stayed on the loose for 11 days, with many people catching only a glimpse of him on the run, according to the McCloughs.

"He was seen all over," Debra McClough said Friday with Taz in her lap. "He was seen at the Church of the Nazarene and over at Dollar General." By everyone but the McCloughs, though. "I thought we'd never see him again," Debra McClough said.

And that was a big concern for the McCloughs. Not only has the couple raised the dog since it was 6 weeks old, but Debra McClough said Taz serves as a sort of health alarm for her at night. "He's my medical dog. I stop breathing sometimes when I sleep. Living in Florida, we could have a hurricane and he," she said, pointing to her husband, "won't wake up. "I'm half the time woken up by this dog smelling me to see if I'm breathing," she said. "He'll start waking you up, start licking you," Gene McClough added.

Taz stayed on the loose until spotted by Ken and Judy Roush while they were on a walk Thursday along the abandoned railroad right-of-way behind Riley Elementary. "He was off the path curled up in a little ball; almost didn't see him," Ken Roush said. "I was pretty sure it was him. A day or so before, when we were on a walk, I'd seen a poster," he said.

The McCloughs had plastered posters with Taz's picture on them around town during their daily searches for the dog. There were a few problems, though. The Roushes said the dog appeared injured and too scared to be approached by strangers. Once he saw the dog, Roush said he tracked down one of the posters and called the McCloughs to tell them he thought he knew where their dog was hiding.

"They came over within about 10 minutes and we showed them where we saw the dog," Judy Roush said. "He was laying right back there again and came right to them."

Taz did have an injured right rear leg and had lost a lot of weight from not eating or drinking, according to the McCloughs. "I could put my hand under his collar, he'd lost so much weight. I just pulled the collar right off his head," Gene McClough said. But he said that hardship was countered by the unseasonably warm weather, which was cooler than what Taz is used to in Florida, but much warmer than the typical Christmas in Ohio.

And all that was forgotten when the McCloughs and Taz got back together. "I went down to the ground and he came to me and started licking my face all over the place," Debra McClough said. "It took us three or four times of calling him to get him to come out. It shocked me when I did see him coming," she said. "All I could do was cry because I never thought I'd see him again."

It made for a much better end to the holiday season than the beginning, she added, and Ken Roush said he was happy to play a role. "I was very, very glad to find the owner, because the lady was very attached to the dog," he said. "Just glad we found the little guy's owner. Everybody's happy."

Source: http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=5908217

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